My eBook collection is getting unwieldy. It is currently sitting at 777.5 GiB across 6,754 files, 103 sub-folders. Mostly a mix of comics and longer book series.
It is the main reason I went away from Calibre. Once I got past 1000 books, it just wasn’t working for me. Lately, the file manager isn’t doing much better.
I have been setting up the folders with [Author, Artist] in the front, but it really doesn’t seem to helping much. I can never remember what the author or artists are in most cases.
I have been looking for some new software. If something is out there that can mimic something like WinAMP does, think that would help immensely. I could do Author in one box, series in another, and have all the books listed in the bottom.
But all I have been able to find is Calibre, which I do not want to use again, or web stuff that pretty much have the same problems I have with Calibre with the including drawbacks of using cover images instead of text.
If there really isn’t any other software out there, could I get some examples on how could organize these things. Some opinions might be helpful as I am really drawing a blank.
what about the large amount of titles makes it more difficult and what is your end goal. What sort of organization does winamp use, I’m not familiar with it.
I just did a bunch of organizing in calibre. I think even with the number you have, it should be possible. That all depends on your exact problem though.
I organize by publishers a lot, then series and make sure I don’t have duplicate tags for anything . as long as you are able to get accurate metadata downloads or can use good keywords to get the large chunks of files all in the same search or two, you can modify all the metadata in huge chunks.
I think with some extra info this is solvable maybe even a plugin could help
All Calibre presents you with is a giant list of books and a search field.
Which isn’t all that helpful for me since I never know what I need to search for. I better at remember where things are.
WinAMP has 3 panes. The top left one shows you all the Artists of music. The top right one has all the selected artists albums, or just all of them if you select All Artist. Then there is the bottom one which show all the song that the top two filter for you. I think this would be great for me since most of my books are series so I can filter out and not get overwhelm and not have to remember all the different authors I have.
RythmBox is kinda laid out the same way be default as well.c
The Winamp layout does seem better spatially but it might have a lot to do with the tags and meta data on music already.
Your library may be lacking in tags I have stuff like I mentioned filled in but it was manually done. Calibre does have an auto download metadata and covers button but its not always right. you can probably help that though. you can specify the websites it searches if you know a very good source for the kinds if media like comics that could help. then you can use the right (left hand actually) hand bar called tag browser narrow down your search in a slightly more intuitive way.
you can also right click any book and click “similar books” then you can pick from a few options there. these options can be customized in the settings as well. if you know CSS there is further customization that can be done but I don’t know much about that.
You mentioned looking at web stuff, but specifically have you given Readarr a look? Their site overemphasizes… acquiring Linux .iso … but also they show multiple views of authors and series.
Try it on a subset of your collection and see if the interface suits you before letting it loose on your whole collection. I haven’t tried Readarr but I have tried other *arr titles and it took a while for me to understand and like them.
@Cakepans
My ePubs are tagged. My CBZs aren’t since you really cant tag those.
As for the tag browser, I knew about it, but it didn’t really help in my case. Most of my books overlap tags. Very few would have an unique combination. They are mostly Fantasy|Scifi Action/Adventure. Some RomComs, but those stick out since there is so few. About a dozen DnD manuals. And the 5 from Randall Monroe
@maplesyrupforever
I have looked into it. As you said, it is mostly for acquiring them. Not really all that great for organizing.
I guess I will go back and try to learn some programming language. I have been told I have a knack for it when I have shown off some of my crappy utility webpages and scripts. Just, ugggh, I hate learning stuff.
Maybe check out the EmbedComicMetadata plugin? It allows meta data on comics in some way. I am not familear with the formats and structure of the CBZ zip files and such so that may be impractical
a different program seems to be the solution here.
It’s one of my goals “in life” to write my own eBook management software because how infuriating I found dealing with Calibre - if you don’t mind, would you care to share your full list of complaints? My idea is to build a web app (yes, so there’s no client software needed) with USB sync and maybe WiFi sync (not sure how complicated that’ll be).
No commitment on timeline yet because I have to sort out some personal stuff first.